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Bravo! I can see why the masses did not enjoy this film, but it was bold, original and unsettling---a FILM....not a movie. If you are the soft, pampered typical American who is easily persuaded by the opinions of others, heed the comments below and deprive yourself of viewing this film. If you have an imagination, you may realize what the writer/Director was trying to express.

I'm not sure when Aronofsky made his transition into Lynchian archetype, but I have to say that I'm not entirely against this metamorphosis. Mother! is a visceral migration into the dark depths of the human condition. Sound pretentious enough for you? Good. If I'm a take-no-prisoners reviewer, Darren Aronofsky is a hold-your-entire-family-hostage-and-make-you-chose-who-lives filmmaker. This film is unapologetically grim, with a slow burn plot that leaves you wondering where exactly you went wrong in life to except this to be a typical isolated house suspense story. I'm definitely a fan of freak out bizarro films, but even I was expecting more Straw Dogs than Rosemary's Baby. Jennifer Lawrence was beautifully wan vision and if, like myself, you can't separate Javier Bardem from his role in No Country For Old Men, well, you wouldn't be that far off.

To be honest, I can see why people didn't like the film. It's certainly not The Fountain or Black Swan, heck, not even Requiem for a Dream. "Brutal" is too kind of a word to describe the last 45 minutes of the movie and the intense tracking close-ups of the cast are at the very least unsettling at strange times. The overall allegory is painfully obvious and the progression of the story is like a Tom Wolfe fever-dream. But what Aronofsky manages to present is a maudlin allegation against the viewer themselves, and, boy, is it a harsh one.

An "allegory" movie that was a complete waste of time. Listed as a psychological thriller, it was just stupid. I can't imagine what kind of downer drugs you'd need to be on in order to write this drivel. Extremely violent & bloody, it was a terrible movie. blechhhhh

Before watching the movie, I had heard that people either got it and like it or didn't get it and hated it. I can completely see why some wouldn't enjoy this, parts can be very stressful to watch. I don't want to give anything away, but this is definitely not like any movie I have seen. Just keep an open mind.

Let me just start out by saying that personally I did not care for this movie what so ever. That being said, it has a much deeper meaning than what you might take it for while you are watching it. If you are into these kind of biblical re-imaginings, then you might like this but if you're thinking it's just your run of the mill disturbing, psychological thriller then you would be mistaken and you are probably not going to like it. Watching it and expecting a horror movie (like I had at first) it will seem boring and confusing up until the very end, when it drops a very confusing and disturbing action sequence on you. Then the movies over. If you can stomach extremely graphic and violent content, although only for a few minutes it's shocking to say the VERY least. When I say it's disturbing, know that I generally love the entire horror genre and can stomach the blood and gore with no issues but this even offended me.

I cannot even star this: Director Darren Aronofsky should've stuck to his second love, Anthropology-- believe he could contribute more uplifting material. The world has
enough helter-skelter strife-- we do NOT need to be subject to the level of shock and
schlock this film delivers: often muted, yet jarringly unsettling confusion, hodpodge horror, surrealistic scenes, the uber-sickening violence, and, to me a degree of down-right misogyny (I found myself wondering if this guy hated his momma-- or his own infant innocence of childhood).

I also caught elements of 'Nazi-style storm-trooper chaos in the mob scenes' and subsequent brutality; and found the line "get the Goyim" surprisingly below-the-belt-over-the-top", injected into this one invasion scene. One wonders if the director is pointedly criticizing his own culture in conjuring up this statement that could surely raise anti-Semitic repercussions; or is he surreptitiously fomenting something under the core of the violent scenes where this comment arises as a brute warning of his own culture to a world-at-large.

Beyond this, I also wondered why Lawrence even agreed to this film at all (since she is a solid actress, I can't fault her acting, though I can w. Bardem!). Pfieffer and Harris have to be excused, I guess, for having to take lower grade film scripts at this point in their careers.
Seems to me, "instant stars" such as these at some time in their careers have agreed--
knowingly or unknowingly-- to "sell their souls to the devil" (metaphorically or....!). Then, at
some point along their raking in the millions, their chips are called in to pay the piper.
And they get into really "dark"byways in their acting careers (on and offstage)....So many of them have....certainly Bardem did...Pfeiffer along the way....now, it seems Lawrence's time is up???

Anyway, I cannot even grant this 1*....It is almost the worst movie I have ever seen (hard-pressed to recall a worse one, and at one point, was SO turned off by the gratuitous violence (forget the high explanation of symbols viewers!), considered shutting off the dvd....But my curiosity prevailed-- not for the film's outcome so much as becoming "socially anthropologic" about the director himself at that point. Which was then that I began wondering if he wasn't privy to some sort of insider Hollywood Satanist hocus-pocus and
contributing his perverted 'opus' to the god Mollach or something)! Pathetic what passes as art, and who, as artists these days....

I'd spoil the movie for you but I'm still not exactly sure what happened. It's boring, confusing, boring... did I mention boring? It's okay to be confusing and disorienting if it's interesting. There's one scene near the end that's interesting, but the rest is just like watching paint dry. Jennifer is a decent actress but nothing special and Javier is terrible in most of his English language roles. No Country For Old Men he barely speaks, and he's good in that.

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Summary

After I had a chance to see mother!, I was even more disturbed by this rush to judgment, and that's why I wanted to share my thoughts. People seemed to be out for blood, simply because the film couldn't be easily defined or interpreted or reduced to a two-word description. Is it a horror movie, or a dark comedy, or a biblical allegory, or a cautionary fable about moral and environmental devastation? Maybe a little of all of the above, but certainly not just any one of those neat categories.

Is it a picture that has to be explained? What about the experience of watching mother!? It was so tactile, so beautifully staged and acted — the subjective camera and the POV reverse angles, always in motion … the sound design, which comes at the viewer from around corners and leads you deeper and deeper into the nightmare … the unfolding of the story, which very gradually becomes more and more upsetting as the film goes forward. The horror, the dark comedy, the biblical elements, the cautionary fable — they're all there, but they're elements in the total experience, which engulfs the characters and the viewers along with them. Only a true, passionate filmmaker could have made this picture, which I'm still experiencing weeks after I saw it.